The Simplified Strategic Planning process is a lean, thorough step-by-step roadmap for answering the questions at the heart of the matter. The three key questions are:

1. What are you going to sell?
2. To whom are you going to sell?
3. How can you beat or (better yet) avoid the competition?

The first two questions define the breadth, scope and focus of your business. The process will help you decide what you will do or will not do (products and/or services), and whom you will serve in the marketplace. These questions determine your appropriate focus.

We have found that many companies do not want to be focused and seem to go out of their way to avoid narrowing things down. The leaders of such companies usually can’t stand the idea of not pursuing a sale. Often, when asked the question, “What are you going to sell?” such leaders answer “Everything we can.” That’s not focus. That’s a pursue-everything approach – often that person will also answer “Everyone we can,” to the question, “To whom are you going to sell ?” The problem to these two answers, of course, is the third question that necessarily narrows things down.

It’s that third question that brings power to your strategy. When you get into the third question and begin examining your competencies, you will really understand the importance of focus. You cannot profitably sell everything you can to everyone you can. Instead, you need to focus on applying specific strategic competencies to target markets. This will allow you to use your resources to build a sustainable competitive advantage instead of just using them up.

These questions are the heart of the Simplified Strategic Planning model because at each step along the way you will be working towards answering them. As you do so you will create a well-considered plan. In the end, you will have a strategy that works and gives specific answers those three questions.

At the end of the Simplified Strategic Planning process, you end up with 6 to 10 action plans that support your objectives which will be accomplished on time and on budget. Simplified Strategic Planning is a lean, thorough, effective process that has been honed and improved for over 35 years.

Simplified Strategic Planning will assure:

• balanced input,
• focused strategic thinking,
• selection of a course and direction that fits your unique competencies, differentiates your company and leads to a sustainable competitive advantage.
• clearly resourced action on a few strategic objectives in support of that course and direction.
• managed implementation

5001 West St. Joseph Hwy.
P.O. Box 40707
Lansing, Michigan 48917
Phone: 1-800-248-2746
In Michigan: 1-517-351-0911

Charles L. Bradford
Center for Simplified Strategic Planning
PO. Box 3324
Vero Beach, FL 32964

Dear Mr. Bradford:

Thank you for providing me with what I firmly believe to be the most productive day of my business career.

You made the comment that strategic planning is the ultimate time management tool. I have found this to be true. Before your workshop our organization was troubled by a sense of uncertainty and confusion.

Needless to say, enormous amounts of time and money were wasted.

We followed your recommendations to the letter and the result was a totally penetrating self-appraisal of our company’s strengths and weaknesses. We evaluated our industry and our competition and we were able to clearly see where our opportunities existed.

What you provided us was a clearly developed step by step process for developing a strategy. We now have focus, commitment and high employee morale. In short, we now know where we want to go and how we are going to get there. This focus, commitment and morale has resulted in our company achieving the INC. Magazine list of the 500 fastest growing companies.

Thanks for providing us with the “intellectual software” that allows us to this very significant achievement.

Sincerely,

William J. Costello

Why Most Companies Fail at Strategic Planning

• Why the entire strategic plan in a few consecutive days always fails.
• Why a quest for perfection can doom the planning process.
• How assumption and presumption errors lead to flawed strategy.
• The dangers of simplistic, complex or me-too thinking
• Why even good strategy often flounders on execution

How to Create a Great Strategic Team

• Why you should never plan by yourself
• Who should be on your team…and who must NOT be
• How to build team commitment
• How to select the best process leader

How to Dominate Your Market

• Why you must define your market with laser-like focus when creating a strategic plan
• The right way to segment your market for maximum profits
• The #1 mistake most companies make when doing market segmentation
• How to gain market share…no matter how tough the competition is
• How to build a Sustainable Competitive Advantage by leveraging your Strategic Competency

How to Get Information You Need

• Why the information you gather is critical to the success of your plan
• The hands-down best way to gather information
• Why you never want too much information…and how to know when you have enough
• How to Measure Key Success Factors
• The accurate way to measure intangibles
• How to create a profitability analysis to uncover and enhance your best profit centers
• The one thing you must always measure to ensure the very survival of your company

How to Find Your Unique Strategic Competency

• Why every company must find its strategic competency and what to do if you can’t find one
• The three elements of every strategic competency
• How to sustain your strategic competency
• The three specific tests that every strategic competency must pass
• How a strategic competency leads to sustainable competitive advantage

How to Make Good Assumptions

• How to avoid one of the biggest mistakes of strategic assumptions
• What to do when it’s impossible to make a reasonable prediction
• The four steps to minimizing assumption errors
• How to prepare for the unexpected

How to Select and Exploit Your Best Opportunities

• How to stimulate creative thinking about opportunities
• The four criteria you should use to assess the viability of any new opportunity

How to Protect Your Company From Potential Threats

• The most important question your company must answer to anticipate any strategic threats
• How to evaluate perceived threats to identify those with the greatest potential impact
• The five steps you must take to minimize the impact of any significant strategic threat

How to Determine Your Strategic Focus

• The six options for your company’s strategic focus
• How to align your strategic focus with your strategic competencies
• The four key factors of market attractiveness
• The seven key characteristics of your competitive position
• The five core business strategies
• How to select the best strategy for each market segment
• The four options for your competitive strategy
• How to select a competitive strategy for each market segment

How to Get From Where You Are To Where You Want to Be

• How to set measurable, specific and achievable strategic objectives
• How to achieve 80% to 90% of your strategic objectives (most company achieve only about 30% of their objectives)

How to Best Allocate Your Resources To Meet Your Objectives

• How to determine resource needs and availability
• How to find the money and the time to carry out your strategic plans

How to Most Effectively Use Your Strategic Plan

• Why the planning process produces better results each time you use it
• How to use your daily behavior to communicate your plan throughout the company
• When to update your plan
• How to monitor your progress and re-assess your strategy for best results.

How to Make Sure You Get the Results You Want

It is relatively easy to create a strategic vision for a company, but much more difficult to follow it and achieve results. Companies that do a good job of implementing their strategy can expect to achieve from 80 to 90 percent of their objectives. The three tools that are vital for success in the implementation stage include: Action Plans, Budgets and Management Schedule.

“A very clear concise practical approach to a business function that we’ve stumbled over for years. We’re going to use this!”

John LeBlanc, Vice President, Performance Designs, Inc.

“Simplified Strategic Planning provided us a straightforward process that helped our already successful organization set a much clearer direction for the future.”

Ed Engle, Jr., President, Rima Manufacturing Company

“A system that is very well honed. Important for those who are serious about planning but need to make every second count.”

Dean Arnold, V.P. of Public Operations, Kenco Group, Inc

“…this program will revise our current floundering SP process.”

Program Attendee

“Good information. I believe that any company that realistically follows the material will be successful.”

Robert Taylor, General Manager, Allcable

“I signed up cautiously; I came to the seminar a bit of a skeptic; I left energized and anxious to apply the learning to our company.”

Scott Bolinder, Executive Vice President & Publisher, Zondervan

“The information was very focused, tangible and practical…which allows you to apply it immediately. Very well done. I learned a lot and am anxious to get started!”

Connie Leachman, VP Customer Relations, Topflight Corp.

“As the chairman of [the strategic planning] effort your program has given us the tools we will need to clearly move our organization through the development and ultimate implementation of our strategic plan. I’m confident that I am now ready to lead this effort for our company.”

Kevin Lapanne, Executive Vice President, Dooley & Mack Constructors Incorporated

“Simplified Strategic Planning provides a logical and timeless framework for analyzing our industry, our company’s place in it, and the goals we need to meet in order to achieve our strategic objectives. Using this process for three years, we have doubled our sales volume and have also doubled our operating profit percentages.”

G. Alex Bernhardt, Sr., Chairman and CEO, Bernhardt Furniture Company

“Gave us a very specific, step by step process to accomplish something which I could never even conceptualize before the workshop!”

Paul Clark, Jr., Sr. VP, Sturgis Molded Products Company

“Our company is just completing its 2nd cycle of Simplified Strategic Planning. We are expanding the process to additional divisions for the 3rd cycle.”

Scott Christensen, Project Manager, Hormel Foods

“What we accomplished…was unprecedented in our company’s history…we have defined a consensus among the top management as to what kind of a company we will be for the next five years. Establishing this shared vision and the means to achieve it would not have been possible without Simplified Strategic Planning. This process is extremely well organized and compelling while allowing the special human attributes of our organization to flourish.”

Harris C. Footer, President and CEO, Easy Day Manufacturing Company

“Excellent presentation. Well presented. Well organized. One of the very best programs I have attended. I can put this to work immediately to benefit my company.”

Program Attendee

“…this will be an invaluable tool as I move forward.”

Terrence Corgan, Regional Sales Manager, Medfax Corporation

“We have used planning methods for the past three years with moderate success. The step by step logical process presented in this program will help us take our company to the next level in terms of profit and growth.”

Scott Zimmer, Vice President of Accounting/Finance, F.P. Horak Company

“A straightforward approach to strategic planning which will work — not an overwhelming process. Will help us create realistic plans.”

Rick Lockwood, Certified Grocers of California Ltd.

“Using Simplified Strategic Planning, VPI tripled sales over 5 years. It has helped us identify opportunities, better understand our markets, and focus our resources to attain the business results we desired…it has contributed in a significant way to VPI achieving our growth and profit objectives.”

T. Godfrey Mackenzie, Vice President, Vinyl Plastics, Inc.

“I have been to numerous programs, but this has by far been the best. You have a powerful message…”

Mark Miskie, Director of Landscape Products, John Deere Company

“The Simplified Strategic Planning process…provides a solid theoretical approach that is applied in a very ‘real world’ down-to-earth manner. The program does an excellent job of providing a defined framework for the planning process without turning it into a mechanistic ‘fill out the form’ exercise. The framework helped us make sure that we were identifying and analyzing the key issues; it did not do our thinking for us. Finally, I felt the emphasis on the development of specific objectives and action plans are the keys to ensuring that strategic planning isn’t just an interesting annual exercise that subsequently collects dust on a bookshelf. I know the strategic plan we produced will make a major difference in the performance of our business.”

Roger A Carolin, President and CEO, CFM Technologies, Inc.

“We do planning at a number of different levels, but this approach will focus our future work in a more unified way.”

Greg Owen, O. D. Consultant, American Family Insurance

“A process that is based on years of experience – not ivory tower theories. Appropriate for companies with no time for ‘fluff’.”

Ruth Ann Church, Project Manager, Great Lakes Trade Adjustment Assistance

“I’ve been doing business planning for over ten years, and this workshop provides a simple methodical approach that I will find useful. This is an area where we have previously struggled.”

Lisa Hardy, Director of Business Planning, Blue Care Network of Michigan

“I was pleased to see that even our very small business will be able to use the concepts and principles discussed.”

Michael Holcomb, President, MP Holcomb Engineering Corporation

“It was the best business related workshop I have ever attended. The information was precise, easy to understand and, in fact, enjoyable.”

Steven Draeger, ARMEX Product Manager, United Hardware Distributing Company

 “Excellent! Excellent! Excellent! Your program ‘hits a home run’ if you’re interested in learning new methods for building a stronger competitive position for your company.”

Timothy Dust, COO/President, F.P. Horak Company, Bay City, Michigan

“This is the most cost effective way to begin the planning process.”

John Campbell, President, C.C. Lynch & Associates

“Simplified Strategic Planning provides a framework for creating direction in a manner that moves away from guesswork and toward intelligent selection. The end result: a destination of choice, not chance.”

Jack Lowe, Jr., Chief Executive Officer, TD Industries
#2 of Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work for in America

At the broadest level, the Simplified Strategic Planning process is a series of structured meetings in which your team starts by gathering some basic data and facts about your external and internal situation. Then you hypothesize key assumptions about the future. You make sure everyone understands it and agrees with the facts and assumptions. They shape all further discussion about strategy.

You will then identify key issues that affect strategy. From there, you go on to develop your strategy (course and direction). Then you define goals and objectives and get into the questions of:

• How do we get there?
• Who will be involved and will they have the time required?
• How much is it going to cost?
• When do we arrive?
• Who is responsible?

 The whole purpose of the Simplified Strategic Planning process is to formulate a winning strategy and to make it happen. If you want to create a beautifully-bound bookend that everyone has and no one uses, you’ll probably spend a lot of time and money. But if you want to create a real, workable plan that gets results, the Simplified Strategic Planning process is for you.

Implementation must be specific because when it is not, it will inevitably fail. The Simplified Strategic Planning process leads to specific implementation of your strategy.

In total, the Simplified Strategic Planning process works out to about seven days of meetings, spread out over twelve weeks or more so that it won’t interfere with your day-to-day business.

Whether you’ve been using strategic planning for years or you’re starting from scratch, we guarantee that this workshop will contain the most valuable information you will ever see on strategic planning. If you don’t feel Simplified Strategic Planning is, hands-down, the absolute best system for strategic planning, you will receive a prompt and courteous refund of your workshop fee.

Put this unique, practical, no-nonsense approach to strategic planning to work and achieve a winning strategy for your company. You will also achieve peace of mind – knowing that the future of your company is strong – with each passing day getting closer and closer to your ultimate picture of success.

There is no better time to do it than now.

• The Simplified Strategic Planning Manual. Complete with comprehensive instructions, illustrated worksheets, and worksheet templates, this invaluable guide will be a trusted reference that you’ll use again and again when you begin implementing Simplified Strategic Planning.
• The best selling book, Simplified Strategic Planning: A No-Nonsense Guide for Busy People Who Want Results Fast!
• 1-Year Access to the CSSP Support Hotline. Your instructor will answer the questions that pop up after the workshop… once you begin implementing Simplified Strategic Planning.
• Lifetime Subscription to Course and Direction. This bi-monthly electronic newsletter delivers cutting-edge insights and helpful tips for keeping your strategic planning on course.